


On the Beach

by ultragirlvfr750



Category: Major Crimes (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-26
Updated: 2015-02-26
Packaged: 2018-03-15 09:59:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3442982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ultragirlvfr750/pseuds/ultragirlvfr750
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack and Brenda take a walk along the beach and Jack has some information for Brenda.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the Beach

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this very quickly after seeing a blakc and white gifset posted on tumblr. Tom Berenger and Kyra Sedgwick walking along the beach in evening wear and then underneath a series of gifs of Mary McDonnell as Sharon Raydor looking a bit lost. It immediately sent my shipper heart racing. I 'saw' the entire thing in my head and this one-shot was the outcome. Set firmly in the MC universe. Hope you like it.

“Tryin’ to win Sharon over by dyin’ your hair black is a little bit pathetic don’t you think Jack?” Brenda asked tartly, “I mean even for you.”

The ocean breeze was soft against her skin and she could feel the sand beneath her toes, her sling backs swinging from one hand. It was the perfect California evening and Brenda wished she was walking with anyone other than Jack Raydor, the Captain’s newly minted ex-husband.

He laughed, stumbling a little too close to her and pulled at the collar of his tuxedo.

“You think I’m trying to win her back?” Jack’s laugh came easily but Brenda could hear the bitterness. “No, she’s made it perfectly clear that whatever chances I had were used up long ago.”

“Then what are we doin’ out here? I wasn’t expectin’ to see you at some goin’ away party for a rank ‘n file Special Investigator out of the DA’s office. We never even had any cases together.”

“Rumor has it you’re leaving for DC?”

Brenda snorted.

“Keep up Jack. That was a rumor back when my meddlin’ ex decided to spread it around the LAPD. Hadn’t even decided I was takin’ it and already it’s common knowledge,” she tossed her hair. “Trust the FBI not to be able to keep a secret.”

“He’s LAPD now,” Jack corrected.

“Right,” Brenda mused. “I suppose he’s Sharon’s problem then. Maybe she’ll have better luck with him than I did.”

“It’s actually Sharon I wanted to talk to you about,” Jack continued and held up his hand before Brenda could interrupt. “She’s here you know.”

Brenda’s eyes widened and she felt her breath catch in her throat. She steeled herself to continue walking and not look wildly back toward the terrace of the hotel.

“I would have tried harder with her,” he confessed, his voice softening, “worked harder at slowing down the drinking, maybe even given up the horses for good. But the last time I came back I realized there was no point anymore. Whatever Sharon felt for me, it’s gone. It’s hard to rekindle something with your ex when she’s in love with someone else.”

“Andy?” the name fell immediately from Brenda’s mouth and once she said it aloud she realized there was an endless ache in her chest. An ache she’d been carrying with her, like an comfortable old friend, since she’d left the LAPD.

Trying to pretend she wasn’t in love with Sharon Raydor had become a game she’d almost mastered but here on the beach with her transfer to DC imminent and the realization that she could possibly live out the rest of her life and never see Sharon again, winning that game against herself no longer held any pleasure.

“Lieutenant Flynn,” Jack scoffed? “Are you kidding? He may have a crush on her a mile wide but it’s not Andy Sharon’s in love with, kiddo, it’s you.”

Brenda whirled, her feet grinding in the sand and stared, slack mouthed at the lumbering, partially soused, man before her.

“You’re not only drunk, you’re insane.”

"Oh honey," Jack chuckled, "I drink too much, I’m a gambler and serial womanizer but I promise you I’m definitely in possession of my faculties. She’s in love with you and if you get on that plane without at least talking to her it’s going to break her heart. Although she’ll never admit it."

"Supposin’ it’s true, why are you tellin’ me all this?"

"Because I was a shit husband." Jack admitted. "Because if she took me back, God love her I’d still be a shit husband, but I care about her and Lord knows she deserves to be happy with someone after the fuckery I put her through."

Brenda stood staring out at the black waves crashing against the beach, the stars lighting up the ocean. The air cooled the flush that had bloomed across her chest and she was thankful for the darkness that hid her flaming face. 

She remembered the last time she’d been with the Captain, alone. It was in her office, late with the blinds drawn, the rest of her team gone home. They were wrangling about what to do with Rusty and instead of violently arguing with Brenda, suddenly Sharon was kissing her. Brenda remembered vividly how their tongues had battled for dominance. Sharon kissed how she fought and Brenda had fought back, biting at the brunette’s lower lip, pulling at her hair while pushing her hard against the desk, paperwork and files crashing to the floor.

Sharon had clawed at Brenda’s shirt, yanking it free from her flowered skirt so she could jam her hands up under Brenda’s bra, kneading her breasts. Brenda had been able to do nothing but whimper and buck against the Captain, biting and sucking at her neck.

As quickly as they’d crashed together they pulled apart and stood panting and staring at one another. For Brenda, what followed continued as a surreal blur. Neither of them had spoken. They had simultaneously straightened their clothes, twitched their hair into place and stalked out of the building.

It took all the effort they both possessed not to tear at one another in the short elevator ride to Sharon’s condo and once inside Sharon had kicked the door closed and slammed Brenda up against it hard enough that Brenda bit her tongue. The metallic taste of blood mingled with the floral taste of the lingering perfume on the Captain’s neck and Brenda abandoned herself to pure sensation.

Sharon took her there in the living room and for the rest of the weekend they didn’t leave the apartment. Brenda lost track of the number of times they made love, fevered desperation giving way to slow and dreamy desire. They lay, entwined, a languid tangle of limbs and skin, touching, tasting, endlessly kissing until their lips were swollen. Every time Brenda would leave the bed Sharon would pull her back and devour her again.

In the brief moments that she slept, curled against Sharon’s side, the nightmares that had haunted her in the months leading up to Stroh’s arrest abandoned her and Brenda revelled in the cocoon of Sharon’s arms.

She awoke early on the Monday morning. It was still dark when she stole out of Sharon’s room, silently pulling on her clothes. With each garment the dull ache in her chest grew and she could barely stand the guilty reflection in her own eyes as she caught sight of herself in Sharon’s hall mirror.

She had fled then, as much from the guilt over her unfaithfulness to a husband she no longer loved as from the terror of the ferocity of the feelings she’d awoken in Sharon’s bed. It had been all she could do to hold onto her sanity in the weeks and months that has followed the death of her mother, the loss of her murder room and the dissolution of her love for Fritz. She’d shut Sharon out completely. Shut out the weekend as if by willing it out of her consciousness she could pretend that it had never happened.

She’d thought that mental discipline and time would ease the ache she felt for the Captain of her old Division but standing next to Sharon’s ex-husband as he listed to one side, staring up at the stars, Brenda had to admit that her desire for Sharon had never gone away and that it was unlikely a career across the country would extinguish it.

Jack leaned into her and the pungent scent of aftershave mixed with the sickly undertone of alcohol quickly brought Brenda back to her senses.

"She told me," his voice was almost a whisper. "Your weekend. After it happened."

Brenda felt her face flush again, this time in embarrassment and anger and she clenched her hands together.

"I could see it all over her face," he continued. "She was never any good at hiding her emotions from me."

Brenda let out her breath in a hiss and turned on him, eyes flashing.

"Whoa now," he raised his hands, "she didn’t give you up easily. I had to pry it out of her. But it changed her. You changed her. "

Brenda let Jack’s words roll over her. Her face, her lips, indeed her entire body felt numb. She shivered.

He reached out to put a hand on her arm and then pulled back, thinking the better of it at the last minute.

"I think she’s haunted most of all by what could have been. If she’d tried," he paused. "If you had."

"I….it was Fritz and my Momma and then I thought.... too much time," she searched for the right words, " ....the moment passed".

The words sounded hollow in her own ears.

This time Jack did touch her, his large hands surprisingly rough on her bare shoulders as he pivoted her in the sand back toward the hotel terrace.

Light spilled across the flagstones and she was there, a silhouette that Brenda would have recognized anywhere. Her hands flew to her face, fingers against the heat of her lips and her heart quickened involuntarily.

"If you don’t go to her right now then you’re a bigger idiot than that moron of an ex of yours says you are."

"Charmin’," Brenda said absently.

But she was already moving toward the familiar figure walking inexorably to the water’s edge.

She closed the distance between them, her shoes knocking against her thigh.

"Captain Raydor," she called as she approached.

"Brenda. Leigh. Johnson," she drew Brenda’s name out slowly as if she were testing it on her tongue. "How very appropriate that you’d be absent at a party thrown in your honour."

"I was never one for sayin’ goodbyes."

"It’s definitely not your strong suit, no."

Brenda let the barb hang between them feeling it’s sting like a slap in the face.

Before she could think she closed the distance between them and took Sharon’s hand in her own. When the other woman didn’t protest she interlaced their fingers and the two women stood staring at the starlight dancing across the water.

“So, D.C.”

It was a statement, not a question, and Brenda cringed inwardly at the pain present in just two words.

“If I told you I was stayin’, would you have me?”

“Why anyone would want to live back east is beyond me. The weather is simply atrocious. It’s so much warmer on the west coast.”

Brenda was engulfed in a memory of being swallowed by Sharon’s arms, the softness of her skin, and the fire flashing in her impossibly green eyes. 

“Can I interpret that as a yes?”

Sharon’s answer was to reach forward and grasp Brenda’s other hand, pulling her close until their foreheads were touching.

“You’re the one who’s ex-CIA. Didn’t you major in interpretation?”

Brenda breathed in the delicate scent of Sharon’s perfume and gripped her hands tighter.

“Was I wrong about this?” She tipped her head forward and brushed her lips against Sharon’s, gratified to feel the rush of the brunette’s breath against her cheek. Her hands travelled of their own accord and wound their way into Sharon’s hair as she teased Sharon’s top lip with her tongue.

The Captain groaned and crushed her mouth against Brenda’s, devouring her lips, her arms wrapping possessively around the blonde’s waist.

“My ex-husband is a total asshole,” Sharon murmured against Brenda’s mouth when they were both able to breathe again.

“So is mine,” Brenda mumbled. 

“What was he doing here anyway?” Sharon asked

“Who, Jack?” Brenda asked between kisses, “He was just remindin’ me about my priorities, that’s all.”

“Yes,” Sharon breathed against Brenda’s ear.

“Yes, what?” she asked almost afraid of the answer.

“Can we try?” Sharon’s voice cracked.

“We can do better than that.”

Brenda drew Sharon against her, wrapping her arms around the woman who had occupied her dreams for as many years as she could remember, and reached up to cup her hair, drawing the back of her head down so that Sharon’s face was buried in he side of her neck. She could feel the huff of Sharon’s breath and pain as the ridge of the older woman’s glasses pressed into the side of her face.

At the water’s edge she saw Jack trip, right himself and shoot her a quick salute before he turned on his heel and ambled away. She watched him, his ex-wife held firmly in her arms, until he rounded a dune and disappeared from sight.

“We can do better,” she whispered to Sharon. “We can.”


End file.
